“Best of Luck” is pulling as my favorite story in the collection. Although “Ankle Snatcher” is the only one that scared me, this one was the most fun to read. I actively wish there were more pages, that the story didn’t have to be over so soon.
“In Bloom” just kept missing. Each time the horror felt like it was going to build to something, each time I thought the concept was going to hit harder, it just failed to work.
If there was an award for the most middle-of-the-road story in this collection, “It Waits in the Woods” would currently win.
I’m not that easily scared, but “Ankle Snatcher” genuinely freaked me out. The night I read it, I obeyed all the rules outlined about how not to get brutally killed by this monster that lives underneath the bed. It’s been a few days since then, and I am still overly cautious when I’m falling asleep.
I Found Puppets Living In My Apartment Walls has two qualities that have continued to stand out to me even after some time since I read it. One: it has an extremely unwieldy name to put into an article. And two: it is one of the scariest, most unnerving, most creative pieces of horror fiction I’ve come across as a reader.
As odd as it is for a horror fan to say, “The Pram” is the first thing I’ve read by Joe Hill, the son of the most famous horror writer in the world, Stephen King. But, from what I’ve heard through the grapevine of criticism, they share a fair number of stylistic flourishes.
The Call of the Flame initially worried me that it would be a repeat of my usual concerns with Epic Fantasy. In my very recent review of The Legacy Saga, I talked about how stories in this genre can lack strong inciting incidents or story hooks because it’s too busy with worldbuilding. And several times, The Call of the Flame almost fell right into the same trap but miraculously continued to pull back and keep things understandable.
Before listening to The Storage Papers, I never thought a podcast could scare me as much as The Magnus Archives. That the mind-melting, the dark-is-dangerous thrill it gave me was the peak of horror storytelling.
The Legacy Saga taught me an interesting lesson about tropes, genre conventions, and storytelling methods that I simply cannot enjoy. In the grand scheme, there’s nothing terribly wrong with The Legacy Saga, no glaring sin, but it was a slog to listen to for any amount of time. The minor issues stack up quickly, and what could’ve been a fun experience turned into a malaise.
Black Tide was a different sort of book than I expected. The premise of a cosmic horror-style alien invasion was interesting by itself, but Black Tide marks the first “bottle episode” book I’ve ever read.
Campfire Radio Theater is an anthology horror series tied to no apparent central themes, no reoccurring characters, and as a bit of foreshadowing: not a consistent approach to storytelling. I picked the episodes semi-randomly, going mostly off if the title or premise seemed interesting.
Civilized is a first for me as a reviewer: it’s an improvisational podcast. Meaning the actors are just playing off each other. And as such, I can’t really judge it on its plot progression. Narrative, themes, writing quality: all out the window. There really isn’t even a storyline to speak of yet, just a premise.
